Spielberg seeks out an ‘Oldboy’ of an actor for Korean remake

Hollywood is bankrupt when it comes to original ideas, and nothing states that more than what is brewing over at the Steven Spielberg and Will Smith camps. Variety reports that the pair are snapping Chan Wook Park’s deftly imaginative revenge flick Oldboy and remaking it via Dreamworks for the folks at Universal.

Universal had picked up the project remake right four years back and had set Justin Lin to direct, but then it found itself at Mandate pictures. This would see Spielberg produce and most likely not direct the project — Spielberg is currently looking for a writer to probably switch this up into an Americanized tale with a pissed off Will Smith acting out revenge with hammer in tow. Besides curbing some of the extreme violence, I wonder how the production will go about the narrative’s most distributing portion of the film – where the lead character is part of what we can call an “involuntary incest”.

For those who’ve yet to see the original, this is the brilliant second film in Chan-wook’s trilogy followed a man in his mid-30s who has been kidnapped by unknown captors and held in a room for years. On the 15th anniversary of his capture, he’s knocked out and awakens in the middle of a city. The plot centers on his search to find out who kidnapped him, who’s killed his family while he was away, and why.